I know Christmas can be a hectic, stressful time of year. So today, I want to tell you a few stories to make you smile and take your mind off of your everyday life. Sound good? Here we go!

What Sadie Wants for Christmas

My three-year-old, Sadie, is quite vocal about what she wants for Christmas this year. Her desire stems from lovely TV commercials. Every time she sees commercials from this particular industry, she points and squeals. "I want that! I want one of those!" Thank you commercials. You are very helpful. However, the commercials to which I'm referring happen to be related to jewelry stores. What does Sadie want? A diamond ring. Not a small spec either. We're talking a full on carat, maybe more. She's partial to chocolate diamonds, by the way, but she seems to be okay settling for regular diamonds as well.

Before Sadie gets what she wants, I think she is going to have to stop taking her beaded jewelry off and laying it about any floor she stands on. I'm talking the library, the fast food restaurants, preschool and everywhere in between. There are going to have to be rules about her diamond ring. :)

The last time we saw a jewelry commercial I told her she would get her diamond. All she had to do was wait 20+ years, meet a nice boy, and allow love to blossom. It is only a matter of time before he gets her just what she wants. The sad part is that all of that will happen way too soon for mama!

In the meantime, I hope she is happy with the tea party set she's actually getting. She can't wear it, but she might try...

Kaelyn and the Crock Pot

My oldest daughter is 7 and she's always had a fear of smoke detectors. Not smoke, necessarily, just the device that detects them. Perhaps this is telling of my cooking skills...

Her fear got so bad for a while that we had to remove the detector from her room just to sleep at night. That was a few years back and while she is better about detectors in general, they still do not have a loving relationship.

I'm not a gourmet chef in any sense of the world, but I do manage to put food on the table in edible form each night. I enjoy crock pot cooking the most because all I have to do is throw stuff in the pot and wait. Dinner served! Our big crock pot has a timer on it and it beeps when the cooking cycle is complete and it switches over to "keep warm."

The last time I cooked in the crock pot, we were home when the cycle changed from cook to keep warm. The beeping isn't loud or obnoxious like a fire alarm, but apparently, it's similar enough. After two or three quiet beeps, Kaelyn panicked, screamed "fire!" and bolted out the front door of the house.

I wondered how long it would be until she came back. Luckily, it was chilly outside so she wasn't away too long. I now have to time our crock pot to beep when we are not home. And attempt to not start fires when I cook in other ways. Kids are so demanding! :)

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Thank you for indulging me in these stories today. I hope they made you smile. Who knows, maybe they'll end up in a book someday. Feel free to comment and hit me with your favorite smiley emoticon so I know I reached my goal today...stories for a smile! :)

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Merry Christmas in advance!

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